Re: [xmca] Consciousness, Piaget

[Tony Whitson <twhitson@UDel.Edu>]

On Mon, 21 Sep 2009, Martin Packer wrote:

> I've tried to stay out of this thread, because it's a difficult topic and I'm 
> no philosopher (though I can't seem to put their damned books down!). But my 
> 2 cents, for what they'll buy, are that one needs to begin with an 
> acknowledgement that Cs is, as I said in my last message, relational. I don't 
> mean by this that it is a relationship between mind and matter, I mean that 
> Cs is a relationship between matter and matter. I think we'd all agree that 
> Cs is a property, an aspect, only of living organisms. I completely agreed 
> with your earlier post, Andy, that Cs is not simply present or absent but is 
> a matter of degree or type. My favorite Hegel is the phenomenology, which is 
> a story about the education of Cs over time. So not all living organisms have 
> the same kind of Cs, and humans don't all have the same kind, of have one 
> kind all their lives. Cs develops. But it is always to be found in 
> interaction between organisms (material) and other material stuff.

It seems to me that it might help a lot to think of consciousness not as a 
property or aspect, but as an activity. It is certainly a relational, 
material (with formal) activity, in relation to other activities in 
ourselves and in our world.
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